by Justin Murphy, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

by Justin Murphy, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- If you woke up from a coma with burns over half your body and three limbs that weren't there or didn't work, what would you be thankful for?

Kadeem Fulmore has considered the question at length. For one thing, he's thankful for everything he can't remember.

A fiery car accident that nearly killed him. Five months asleep, then six months of flickering consciousness as his memory slowly returned. He doesn't remember any of it, and he considers that a blessing.

He does remember what his mother told him when he came to: "God has a reason and a purpose for everything. Maybe you can be an inspiration to someone."

Fulmore, 23, was discharged from Monroe Community Hospital on Monday after two years away from home. From the way he, his family and his therapists and nurses cried, the inspiration was apparent. Words of thanksgiving were on everyone's lips.

It began in November 2011, when Fulmore, an Aquinas graduate, was in his senior year as a finance major at Lincoln University near Philadelphia.

He was a member of a fraternity, several business organizations and the school's step team, and was considering graduate school after completing his bachelor's degree.

On Nov. 4, 2011, he and his best friend, Anthony Washington, got a ride with another student, Phillip Tomsic, to pick up some Chinese food off campus.

Fulmore didn't know Tomsic was drunk. On the way back, the car went off the road, slammed into a tree and ignited. Police later estimated Tomsic was driving about 85 mph.

Washington died instantly. Tomsic crawled out, injured but alive. Fulmore was knocked unconscious and remained in the back seat of the burning car for several minutes before first responders pulled him out.

His mother, Michelle Fulmore, was leaving Friday night services at God's Vision Ministries in Rochester when she heard about the accident. A television reporter who called her confused the two passengers in the car and told her that her son had died.

"It was a horrible moment, to think you lost your child," she said. "I felt like I was in a closed box. The whole world closed in on me and I couldn't get out."

It took about six hours for her to drive to the hospital. When she finally arrived, the news was grim.

Fulmore had burns over nearly 60 percent of his body, two collapsed lungs and massive brain damage. Doctors put him into a coma and said he was unlikely to last 36 hours.

He lasted, and the surgeries began: amputations of his left leg and right foot and dozens of skin grafts. He was kept in the coma until the end of March 2012, then transferred to Monroe Community Hospital in April for rehabilitation.

Fulmore suffered short-term and long-term memory loss in the crash; it took six months at MCH before he understood what happened.

"I was looking at the window saying, 'What the hell is Monroe Community Hospital? Who kidnapped me?'" he said.

Hospital staff broke the news to him every morning for months: He had been in a car accident. His best friend was dead. His legs were gone. They tried to touch him where he'd been burned and he cried from the pain.

"He came in and he couldn't walk, eat or move," said Jacob Ayers, an occupational therapist. "It took months just to touch him."

Fulmore doesn't remember the accident or anything from the year that followed it. But starting last fall, he had to decide how to move forward.

"In my mind, I thought, 'Damn, my life is over,'" he said. "I could have been doing this or that, but instead I was stuck in bed."

Even a year after the crash, his future was far from certain.

Heather Sobel, medical director of the rehabilitation unit at MCH, said many patients in Fulmore's position never regain their independence.

"He had a long way to go," she said. "He could have lived forever in a place like this."

That wasn't what Fulmore had in mind. He dedicated himself to his rehab, as the therapists, nurses and doctors at MCH bent, prodded and pushed him five or six days a week for more than a year.

They re-taught him to eat, talk, use his hands and walk. They called him "So Serious" from his common complaint: "Ow, that hurts! I'm so serious!"

In return, he flirted with the female patients on his floor and poked fun at the staff, endearing himself to both.

"He's kind of become everyone's little brother around here," physical therapist Kristen Rund said. "We definitely have laughed a lot. Some days he was mad and probably wanted to punch me, but mostly we had fun."

There were humbling moments. The former high school basketball player failed repeatedly before managing to bounce a ball five times with his "good" hand.

But in long-term rehabilitation, where adults re-learn skills that came naturally their entire lives, a positive attitude goes a long way. Fulmore has one.

Doctors initially didn't think he'd live; staff at the hospital said he's more full of life than anyone they know.

They didn't think he'd walk again, and they certainly didn't think he'd be leaving in-patient rehab after less than two years. Monday afternoon, three days before Thanksgiving, he walked out the hospital door for good.

The staff lined the halls of the rehab ward to wish him goodbye, crying as he rolled by. Outside, the nuclear members of his "MCH family" cheered as he discarded his wheelchair and stepped hesitatingly along the sidewalk toward the car that took him home after two long years away.

"God is good," Michelle Fulmore said.

"No, God is great," Kadeem corrected her. "God is amazing."

Fulmore will still have rehab sessions five times a week, and a nurse will come to his mother's house in Webster in the morning and evening. In time, he hopes to walk on his prosthetic legs without a walker and regain some of the movement in his right hand.

His immediate goal is to finish his degree and move on with his education and a career. He feels no bitterness toward Tomsic, who was recently sentenced to five to 10 years in prison. He's not even self-conscious about the scarring on his arms and face.

"I'm brown and pink," he noted. "It's the most beautiful skin color."

Fulmore, whom doctors didn't expect to join his family at the Thanksgiving table, had no problem thinking of reasons to give thanks.

Among them: a year's worth of unconsciousness and amnesia, when the pain was too intense. A second family of hospital friends he hopes to visit often. A second chance that Anthony Washington, his best friend, didn't get.

"I don't see the point of being depressed when it's not doing you any good," he said. "I just want to try to get back into life. I feel like I've been left behind and I have a lot to catch up on."